Exploring Athens

Saturday Sep 29th, 6.30 am.

We arrived in Athens, Greece last night after completing our Turkey adventure.

We can already see big differences between the two countries. Our hotel is modern and very well equipped. One thing we noticed everywhere in Turkey is that they don't seem to know how to tile correctly - even new hotels had rubbish tiling jobs in their bathrooms with everything smothered under huge layers of grout. The hotel here has a lovely bathroom with professional standard of finish.

The big problem is that Athens is a city in decline. With such unemployment there are homeless people everywhere. Just outside our hotel are people sleeping on the footpath, junkies taking drugs and dealers selling drugs. It's so sad and hard to see how Greece will get itself out of the mess it is in. We saw the stadiums that were built for the Olympics - guess what? Apparently, it is now unused and falling into disrepair, even though it was one of the reasons that sent Greece to the brink of financial disaster. I don't think any city that has hosted the Olympics has ever had a permanent benefit from it.

In Turkey the cities were all clean and we never saw any drug taking or homeless people. I would not feel safe out at night in Athens.

Today we will do some more exploration of the city.

After breakfast a few of us got on to the hop on hop off bus, thinking it would be a good introduction to an unfamiliar city. We had only travelled for a short distance before I could hear the sound of a man shouting at the top of his voice. When I looked out the bus window, I noticed that there was a young man running around and gesticulating wildly. Even more alarming was the fact that he was ripping off all his clothes. Soon he was stark naked. I can only presume that he was having some sort of a bad drug trip. It was a rather brutal introduction to the city.

I got off the bus near the Acropolis and spent much of the rest of the day exploring this amazing historical location. Somehow, I managed to walk the entire way back to the hotel without getting lost or mugged. Quite an achievement, I thought.Read more